Rolf Nevanlinna - Nevanlinna and Politics

Nevanlinna and Politics

Rolf Nevanlinna did not participate actively in politics, but in the thirties he was known to sympathise with the right-wing Patriotic People's Movement party and, partly because of his half German ancestry, was leaning towards Germany. In the spring of 1941, Finland contributed a battalion of volunteers to the Waffen SS, which then fought on the Eastern Front. At the time, the battalion was considered to form a certain bondage with Germany, as Germany and Finland both fought against the Soviet Union, without a formal alliance. In 1942, an official SS Volunteer Committee was established in Finland to take care of the battalion's somewhat strained relations with its German superiors. A special concern was a fear that the men serving in the battalion would be too much infected by the Nazi ideology. Rolf Nevanlinna was chosen to be the chairman of the committee, as a non-political person respected in Germany but loyal to Finland. The battalion was finally brought back to Finland and disbanded in 1943.

Nevanlinna's activities during the war did not affect his mathematical contacts. His election to the presidency of the IMU was almost unanimous. In the 1950 the Soviet mathematical community was isolated from their Western Colleagues. The International Colloquium on Function Theory in Helsinki in 1957, directed by Nevanlinna, was the first post-war occasion when the Soviet mathematicians could contact their Western colleagues in person. In 1965, Rolf Nevanlinna was an honorary guest in a function theory congress in Armenia.